Raja Bell on Miami: “It wasn’t a fit.”

Raja Bell made it known on the radio, before the summer started, that he was interested in playing for the Heat, in the same city where he played collegiately for FIU. And he seemed to be a good option for Miami, as a backup at the wing spots who could defend and make open threes.

In the end, the money didn’t make sense, especially when the Jazz offered him a three-year contract for roughly to $10 million. The Heat couldn’t have gotten close to that.

“We had a couple conversations early that they’d be interested,” Bell said of the Heat. “As free agency started, I got some calls and they were obviously trying to sort their stuff out, and trying to pull off the coup as you will. Then I talked to Erik (Spoelstra) once they had done what they wanted to do, and he sent me a couple of texts saying it was time to come play at home. I appreciated it but it wasn’t the best situation for me at that point…. It was all cool. It just didn’t work out.”

Money aside, did it seem like a fit from a basketball perspective?

“It could have been,” Bell said. “I wasn’t sold that it would have been a great fit. It was hard to tell exactly what kind of opportunities were going to be there, when you throw guys on a team like that. And I wasn’t ready to concede some of the things that I could do as a player. I know some people did, but I didn’t think I was that old, and I didn’t think I was marginalized to that point as a player that I could kind of accept that at this point. So the combination of those two really made it a tough decision to stay there. I don’t think it would have been good for me.”

Especially after Mike Miller signed. Then James Jones re-signed.

Still, he added, “Maybe I’ll get a year in before my career is over.”

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